The Jet Black Hedgehog: Shadow the Hedgehog (Manga)

I don't know if Sonic Team themselves are willing to explore the Black Arms underneath Doom in any sort of sentient context.

In one of the levels, Amy can be seen telling Shadow not to hurt Eggman's robots (in spite of Eggman already taking this position for the stage itself, making it a weird one-off case of both NPCs telling you not to hurt the robots) because she feels sorry for them. Meanwhile the Black Arms are treated like insects comparatively, with Amy getting grossed out and telling Shadow to get rid of them repeatedly. That's obviously just one character's pov, but considering no other characters even care to empathize with the troops, with even Black Doom himself only calling them soldiers or his offspring, it seems to lean pretty hard into the idea of the larva on the ground being not much different from the more humanoid black arms, while still affording room for Eggman's robots to get the benefit of the doubt for some reason.

It's... weird, but ngl it also makes sense with how animalistic they seem to portray their place in the world. Black Doom is afforded sentience so that he can "look down" on humanity and do the things he does in the game, but since he's the source of all Black Arms, (and possibly the hivemind) is this an equivalent to getting rid of a leader and allowing everyone to be free?


Edit: I forgot I've basically repeated myself in this thread wrt Doom in the GUN raid lol. Leaning a bit too hard into a "What about Black Doom's mindset?!" at this point

 

Shadow the game treating the Black Arms like vermin doesn't mean the rest of the series has to. It's almost 20 years old, after all. This is my bias in part, since I always liked that Eclipse from post-reboot Archie was surprisingly human despite being Black Arms himself, but I dunno, we've been humanizing badniks for a while, I don't see a reason that an alien species that may literally be entirely mind-controlled need be exempt.

 

I'm perfectly OK with Black Doom being the one giving birth to an army of soulless creatures. If he'd, let's say, originally started out as one of them, it would be too similar to Neo Metal Sonic. (And the villain from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap)

 

I know, but we're talking about something made for a character that Sonic Team themselves are insanely strict over. There's rumblings that even the Dark Rider as the fandom claims it is off limits, which only makes sense if it's viewed in the context of Shadow using the motorcycles as a tool in these games and nothing else. The ideas have a whole lot of potential to be explored like Eclipse, but in the context of what's doable with the character and his story elements under that, it probably makes more sense to look at them in their original context? If they really are trying to maintain consistency.

 

I don’t actually like Black Doom/the Black Arms backstory at all, so almost anything is an improvement.

 

I mean, sure, but I was only talking about a thing I would like to see, not one I think I'm going to.

 

I didn't care much for Eclipse, because I don't think he added much to the Black Arms. The only other sentient Black Arm he interacts with was Black Death, who dies in his introduction arc, so we didn't really get a lot of that dynamic for me to care. I wish they stayed around for a bit longer for that dynamic to grow, which would in-turn make Death's demise at Shadow all the more tragic.

 

i think they should give Shadow a Semi-Automatic USP again

 

I feel having the villain kill the hero's loved ones is a rather lazy and cliche way of making things personal by this point.

 

https://x.com/corocoro_tw/status/1836963493846864325

Ok, so... corocoro can't actually cancel this manga, right? I know that's what asian Sonic fans held over fan translator's heads ever since the incident went down, and here's as close of an admission of that possibility from corocoro themselves, but can they really back out of, and in turn threaten SEGA and the manga artist, just because of digitally reproduced scans in territories that can't even read the magazine? I'm more inclined to chalk this sentiment up to being overdramatic rather than representing reality itself, unless there's some precedent to it already.

Eng translation for reference

 

I bet no one would've said something if it were just the translation. Like, just the words, not full pages.

It would have been like posting song lyrics online, which is AFAIK not prohibited.

I dunno.

 

Pretty dumb to make threats against patterns of human behavior instead of just putting out an English release themselves. Piracy is a service problem.

 

I don't always agree with that statement, but this is one of those cases where it couldn't be more true. People want this product that CoroCoro making, so much so that CoroCoro have had to issue a fucking statement about piracy. Why not say "wow, thanks for your interest, we're going to aim to deliver an official translation for you all to enjoy".

 

There have been one-off, very late to the party official translations of some Mario and Kirby Corocro Comics in recent years, though this might be a special case where they might wanna chat with Sega about getting this translated in some form ASAP, especially to cross-promote the game. I doubt they could get a printed comic out here that quick, but maybe a digital release? Either way they should see this as high demand that they should cash-in on rather than moan about people that can't get it resorting to unofficial scans.

 

More to the point for them, are English scanlations something that their readership in Japan are gonna have access to or interest in? If they're upset because it impacts their sales then really they can only realistically talk about the market they're servicing, that being Japan. While technically we here in the West have access to their sites and social media, there's a barrier to entry and same in reverse. The impact to their Japanese readers would be negligible I'd think (could be wrong here, feel free to correct me).

If they're upset because they're losing out on revenue in the West, then really they did it to themselves by not releasing it here. If they're upset over the principal of the thing, then really they're missing the point here.

 

corocoro cares about scanalations now? that mag had been a pretty strong source of Pokemon news on upcoming games for ages, and sites like Serebii always translated what it said into English on their front page. But now they care I guess. lol

(could it be that Sega is displeased with this?)

 

Normally with stuff like Pokémon news and such, people just share the info from the scans whilst the scans themselves don't show up quite as readily (although they do show up). Whatever screenshots and artwork are in the magazine normally get officially released online and in higher quality within a short amount of time anyway, and the information isn't a unique CoroCoro product.

This is different, because manga is a product produced exclusively for CoroCoro that isn't available elsewhere. When the whole thing shows up online, translated or not, I can understand the company being unhappy with the unauthorised distribution of their work. But you know, what do you expect people to do if you won't fucking sell them your product?

 

We are fans of the Ultimate Life Form. We read whatever we want.

 

I shouldn't be surprised but seeing people talk about it on that website like people are being unfair for wanting an english translation... There really are some people out there who just don't think beyond what is told to them by officials, huh